


Journey of a Cocktail Glass

by Autumn_Llleaves



Category: Poirot - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-18 04:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14205285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Autumn_Llleaves/pseuds/Autumn_Llleaves
Summary: The first act of the Three Act Tragedy ends differently. Two drabbles on what could have happened.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The fanfic is based on the Suchet adaptation, I haven’t read the book yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: contains some spoilers for "The Body in the Library".

_Hercule Poirot Dead of Heart Failure: World Mourns Great Detective_

Egg sighed as she folded the paper and put it carefully into the not-for-dustbin pile. That had been a hard time for Charles: over the course of little more than a year, he had lost two of his dearest friends. First Monsieur Poirot and then the poor doctor, too. On the latter’s funeral, Charles literally had to lean on her for support. 

The murder case was never solved for lack of evidence against anyone. Charles was inclined to believe it was Muriel Wills, and Egg quietly agreed. A playwright bringing drama to life too realistically. She must have been just rehearsing something she wanted to put later in her works.

Charles and Egg had a very quiet wedding, in a small village church with only a couple of guests, and went to Scotland on an equally quiet honeymoon. For a while, her husband seemed a shadow of his merry and enthusiastic self, and Egg was desperate to see him cheered up at least a little bit. 

She never regretted her decision, though. Their love for each other hadn’t weakened in the least, and as for this melancholy – well, Egg knew she was marrying an older man.

The birth of Lotty had improved his spirits a lot. He doted on her so much that they had had a few quarrels over it – Egg was afraid he’d spoil the girl rotten.

Lotty was now grown, a beautiful, cheerful woman of twenty who studied economics and dreamed of running her own hotel in the Colonies. Her brother Herman (Charles wanted to honor Poirot but didn’t want to bring endless misery on the boy by calling him Hercule) was a school prefect, set on going to Cambridge. Charles had always been so proud of his children…

Egg’s vision blurred. She hadn’t noticed she was crying again.

It was to be expected, wasn’t it? He was thirty years older. She knew it pretty well that theoretically there was little chance of her passing away first.

But knowing in theory was one thing and living through her loss was another. Only a week ago he had been here – laughing, loving, happy, – and now she was suddenly all alone. Looking at his papers in the attic to see what to throw away and what to keep as a reminder. A widow. It sounded so unreal.

She picked up something yellowish and half-torn. A hotel reservation and receipt from Monte Carlo. 1934 – oh, it was the time when…

Suddenly, she stared at the little blank in surprise. It was a misprint. Surely a misprint. It showed that Charles checked in the day after Dr. Strange was killed.

No, it said the same date on the other side.

Then she must have remembered it wrongly…

But Charles was always stressing that point. "The news reached me in Monte Carlo… Oh, Egg, to think of it, I was enjoying myself in Monte Carlo and couldn’t be there for my friend… Why did I ever go there? I had no suspicions…"

She swallowed and glared at the blank. Fiercely wished the wrong date to turn into the right one.

It just wasn’t possible, Charles had never lied. Offstage, he had never lied.

Egg threw the paper into the fireplace and watched it burn.

It had to be some mistake. Charles had never lied. Anyway, why would he had wanted to lie that time? Monsieur Poirot and Dr. Strange were his old friends. He had sunk into depression after their deaths! He couldn’t have anything to do with them!

 

 _And some people still think she had been with him only for the money!_ thought Charlotte Cartwright.

When she came to visit her mother a couple of days after her father’s funeral, she was struck by the sight that greeted her. Her radiant youthful Mum, often mistaken for her older sister, seemed to have aged decades. Pale, sullen, with dull eyes, she looked completely at a loss as to what to do now. 

It had grown worse over the time. Mum had taken to getting that particular vague look in her eye and saying things like:

"Why didn’t he say it outright? There is the hotel bill."

Or:

"All the clues are burnt. There’s nothing to be done."

Or:

"I wonder how it went the second time."

It appeared she had concocted an elaborate crime story where she in turns played the victim, the murderer, the accomplice, and the detective. These things, the doctor said, happened after severe emotional stress.

"She is probably reliving her past," Herman said. "Dad told me – that case with the nicotine poisoning. They never really solved it."

"Oh, dear," Charlotte whispered. "Mum is only fifty-one, she can’t be demented… can’t be!"

She could, it seemed. As months and years went by, their mother retreated more and more into that crime fiction world of hers. She dug up old papers and records, she called some law firms, and then (it was about three years after Father's death) she went to London for some reason she refused to reveal to Charlotte. When she returned, she looked, if possible, worse than before – completely broken down.

"What's it, Mum?" Charlotte asked gently.

"Nothing."

"Please – tell me. Tell me, you'll feel better."

"I assure you, Charlotte, there's nothing that should trouble you, my dear."

"Mum," Charlotte hugged her. "Listen, please. I know Dad's death was a terrible shock to you, but he wouldn't have wanted you to bury yourself alive afterwards!"

"I don't even know what he would have wanted for me," she whispered.

"Now, Mum,  _please_. Think of me, if you won't think of yourself. I can't bear seeing you like that. I'll tell you what. Let's go together on vacation. Take a break from that horrible October weather. How about Majorca? Or Monte Carlo?"

"Not Monte Carlo, please," her mother said.

"Oh, afraid Herman and I will gamble away the money?" Charlotte smiled. "Well, fine, I've heard splendid reviews about Costa del Sol. Grace Kelly herself went there, you know. How about that? Herman has already discussed his timetable with Professor Burleigh, and I've got four weeks' leave from my agency. We're free as birds."

"I suppose," Mrs. Cartwright murmured. Then she suddenly looked up and grinned broadly, with the look of someone who's facing the inevitable:

"Yes, Lotty. Costa del Sol it is."

As it turned out, she had forgotten to take her change from the taxi driver – Charlotte went out to take it herself.

" _Where_ did you drive her?" she asked.

"Somerset House," the driver shrugged. "She seemed rather upset about it, though."

"It's all that stress still," Charlotte sighed. A friend of hers, Dinah Blake, had once told her about a case that was solved thanks to some old lady checking up records at Somerset House. Mum had met Mrs. Blake too, hadn't she? Now it seemed she was playing the detective herself.

 

The vacation at Costa del Sol had cured Mrs. Cartwright's mind perfectly. She never became vague or played the sleuth again. To Charlotte's delight, her mother returned almost back to her previous cheerful state.

However, if her mind was sound, her body was not. As the doctor explained, Mrs. Cartwright's heart had suffered severely after the shock of her husband's death. Two years later, Hermione Cartwright died after the pain from an otherwise not so dangerous closed fracture in a broken leg caused a heart attack. At least, that's what the doctor told Charlotte and Herman.

"She didn't seem to fight very much, though," he told his colleague later. "She... well, it looked like she surrendered at once. So I thought."

"Strange," the colleague said. "As far as I know, Mrs. Cartwright was the fighting sort."

"It was her husband's death. She was completely broken after that."

"Poor woman. She wasn’t sixty yet, and looked even younger. If you ask me, John, people should marry someone their age. Spares you a good deal of trouble."

The doctor, who was vying for the hand of a wealthy widow twelve years older than him, said "Uh" and went to see another patient.


	2. Chapter 2

The cocktails were duly taken, and the talking grew more animated as the party went on. Hermione Lytton Gore was discussing some charity organization with the vicar and his wife. The vicar wanted her advice on setting the date and time for a concert which should provide the profits for a newly founded orphanage.

"Well, if you ask me..." Egg coughed. "I think..." she coughed again and took a sip from her cocktail. It didn't do her much good as she went into a fit of coughing.

Her mother, Sir Charles and Oliver were at her side at once.

"Egg, come on, have some water," Mrs. Lytton Gore cried, pouring her a glass.

"Please, Egg, what's wrong?" Oliver slapped her back to help her cough it out.

Sir Charles said nothing – he was frantically looking from Egg's cocktail glass to the tray where all the glasses had been as all color drained from his face.

All the guests were now crowded around the young woman and watched in helpless terror as she – no longer coughing – gave her last feeble gasps for air and fell back.

" _Egg_!" her mother screamed, catching her and shaking her madly, as if trying to shake life back into the body. "Egg, please, please, don't!"

"This can't be happening," Oliver whispered as he felt for her pulse and stood back in a daze. "This can't be happening. Not Egg. It's not possible."

But who really broke down was Sir Charles. He covered his face with his hands with a strangled cry:

"Egg, no, _darling_!"

He stared at her silent form again, petrified. 

The look of Hercule Poirot, meanwhile, flickered towards  _him_. And, frankly, Poirot could hardly believe what he saw. It was shock combined with guilt, plain and obvious guilt.

Sir Charles must have sensed him looking. His eyes met Poirot's, and the detective's last shreds of doubt vanished. Still, his mind refused to believe it.

When the ambulance and the police arrived, Sir Charles took a chance to come to Poirot and tell him in a hushed whisper:

"After the funeral. I want to be able to say farewell."

 

"So it was you who put the poison in the glass, but you didn't intend it to be drunk by Mademoiselle Lytton Gore?" Poirot said.

"I won't even ask how you guessed," Charles Cartwright said, looking tired to the point of numbness. "For sure I didn't. I was... I was certain I gave her a good glass. They look so bloody alike."

"Then... may I ask, what was the _point_? Was I so mistaken – all these years that we've been friends? Why did you want to murder someone randomly?"

"I'm a married man," Sir Charles said gloomily. "I was a young idiot, and she was psychotic even then. I don't know what I was thinking. But I'm married. She's a mental patient now, so no chance of divorce. The only one who knew was Bartholomew."

"Dr. Strange?" Poirot repeated. "But he is the one of our company who _doesn't_ drink cocktails."

"That was going to happen later. This was a rehearsal of sorts. I was going to see if I could put another glass in the place of the poisoned one. So that they wouldn't find traces of poison. Then, after a while – there'd be Bartholomew."

"And you called yourself his friend!"

"I still do. But if he were gone..."

"I see. The last obstacle between you and marriage to Mademoiselle Lytton Gore."

Sir Charles lowered his head:

"It seems so terrible now. I mean – one of the key points was that the glasses looked so  _alike_!"

Poirot nodded gravely:

"So alike – that you got confused yourself."

After a pause, he said:

"You're going to give yourself up?"

"What else is for me to do? Egg is dead... I really deserve to hang for that alone. I just wanted to say... I am sorry, old friend. I am so very, very sorry."

He stood up, gathered his coat and left.

"Very awful," George sighed. "To think that you, Monsieur Poirot, could have been murdered at that... rehearsal. By someone who was your friend, too. The defence might be taking the line of temporary insanity or something. I think he _has_ lost his mind. Very sad. But what can one expect of an actor?" he added with barely hidden disapproval.

Hercule Poirot said nothing. On the whole, he preferred it when murderers confessed themselves to him – that usually meant that they had some conscience left, in contrast to those who staunchly denied everything until faced with direct evidence, and he, unlike most policemen, offered some words of comfort for the genuinely remorseful ones – but right now, he would have preferred Sir Charles went straight to the police. It had been far too painful.


End file.
